If it isn’t bad enough that I am already disappointed with people in general, then to find out about the senseless killing of an innocent teenager, Nabra Hassanen, proves all in a nutshell what is so wrong with this world and the bad seeds never stop culminating. Not a time to be proud to be part of humanity, that’s for sure.
I lost my father when I was a teenager and miss not having him here to wish him a happy father’s day, give him a hug and have a conversation over dinner with him. A father-daughter bond is strong and even in death is unbreakable. Time may ease the deep loss you feel, but you never get over it. On the other side of the spectrum, when a father loses a child, I’m sure the loss is even more unbearable especially when it’s under horrendous circumstances as in the case of Mahmoud Hassanen Aboras, a father who tragically lost his teenage daughter, Nabra Hassanen, on Father’s Day.
Nabra didn’t get a chance to wish her father a happy father’s day, or he to celebrate the day with her either, as she was brutally murdered in the early hours of Sunday morning this past Father’s Day. Instead he spent the day in agony, praying for her safety, while the community frantically searched for her. He will never see her graduate, get married, have kids or celebrate any birthdays and other special occasions with her. His father’s days to come will never be the same again.
It’s very heartbreaking and difficult to understand how someone could just take an innocent child’s life like that, or any life for that matter. Nabra’s death was the consequence of an escalated argument between a motorist, Darwin Martinez Torres, and a boy from the group of teenagers she was with, while they were walking back to their mosque, after leaving an eating establishment, during the holy month of ramadan. Torres, who allegedly beat her to death with a metal baseball bat, didn’t even have an ounce of empathy toward her as a human being, nor did it occur to him that she was someone’s daughter, sibling, friend and how much he would destroy their lives, not to mention his own too. And given he supposedly is a father of a young child, he should know that a child needs a father to look up to. Not only did he take a child from her father, he also took a father from his child.
There’s no doubt that the suspected murderer is fully responsible for this horrific crime and must be punished to the fullest extent of the law but there is something beyond this that needs to be addressed, to emphasize what really is wrong with this world. Why life is not valued and is treated like it’s disposable? Why when you don’t fit a certain standard, whether it’s your religion, skin color, gender, nationality, financial status or whatever else, you are considered to have less value? Why we cannot show respect to one another even if we are not in agreement at any level?
It’s hard not to interpret this tragic incident as a racially-motivated hate crime when it was clearly visible that Nabra was a muslim by the islamic attire she was wearing. Even though this crime has been classified by police investigators as road rage, it still involved extreme anger and violent hatred on the part of the perpetrator. He went way too far in his so-called road rage and it doesn’t make it any more acceptable or excusable for what he brutally did to that innocent girl.
What happened here isn’t a typical incident targeting muslims since the culprit himself is in a minority group, latino from el salvador, who on top is suspected to be an illegal immigrant. Why would a person who has the most to risk of getting jailed and deported not want to stay under the radar? Instead goes into a violent rage, blatantly attacking a group of teenagers who could easily have gotten his license plate or identified him. Obviously, it was only about an hour or so after the incident that police caught up to him anyway, since he was suspiciously driving around the streets, which is very unfortunate that this same police could not have been driving by at the time the incident was occurring so a life could have been saved. I presume his sorry-ass defense will be some sort of mental disorder that occurred from his road rage episode, as one would question what the heck was he thinking.
It’s only bound to get more explosive when you have two minority groups that are being targeted in the US. Muslims as a whole, no matter which country they are from, are being portrayed as terrorists while the other group of illegal immigrants, specifically hispanics coming through the Mexico-US border, who are collectively being portrayed as vicious criminals, due to President Trump’s strong stance on both issues especially during his intense campaigning prior to the election. The culmination of these two groups interlinked and created a deadly result on Father’s Day.
One thing that is clear, all the negativity and hatred going on has taken a toll on the youth. They are the ones most impressionable who need positive influence.
What it really boils down to is that everyone who added to this firepot of hate is accountable for what happened to Nabra Hassanen, not only the perpetrator, Darwin Torres, even though he is fully to blame for the despicable crime he committed, as had no right to take anyone’s life.
It’s baffling to me that the US government, under Trump’s leadership, thinks that building walls is going to be a solution to get rid of illegal immigrants when most are already in the US to begin with and those not in, will just find other ways to get in, and should be building bridges instead. You can’t just shut down borders and enclose yourself as that is the same as locking yourself indoors in your house, turning off the tv and hope the problems just go away. They won’t.
I don’t think anyone is going to win the battle against terrorism with discrimination and violence. All it has been doing is creating more terrorist attacks as we look around at the many incidents that have been taking place lately, not only in the US but other parts of the world too, such as Paris, London and Manchester.
Yes there is plenty of blame to go around because society as a whole has let the seed of hate grow.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sadly we now have a new poster child, a truly innocent victim in all this, for what is going wrong with this world and if this Nabra Hassanen tragedy cannot open everyone’s eyes to bring constructive changes both in the US and the rest of the world, then incidents like this will increase and we all won’t feel safe.
Makes me wish me and my cat could just live isolated in the wilderness somewhere away from all this hatred. Why can’t everyone just let everyone live in peace? Where is the love?
